Variation in Botanical Reference Materials: Similarity of Actaea Racemosa Analyzed by Flow Injection Mass...

Area of Science:

• Botanical Reference Materials (BRMs)
• Chemometrics
• Herbal Medicine Analysis

Background:

• Botanical reference materials (BRMs) exhibit variability in chemical composition influenced by species, cultivar, and harvest conditions.
• This variability can lead to statistically significant differences when analyzed using chemometric methods.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare the chemical composition of various Actaea root botanical reference materials (BRMs).
• To analyze A. racemosa root BRMs, commercial roots, and supplements using chemometric methods and pre-processing techniques.

Main Methods:

• Flow Injection Mass Spectrometry (FIMS) for sample analysis.
• Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and factorial multivariate analysis of variance (mANOVA) for chemometric analysis.
• Evaluation of selected pre-processing approaches.

Main Results:

• Statistically significant compositional differences were identified between genera (Actaea, Panax, Ginkgo) and among Actaea species.
• Variability in 6% of BRM variables was conserved, reducing compositional differences between sources.
• Pre-processing methods, variable selection, and confidence limits influenced the compositional overlap of A. racemosa and other Actaea BRMs.

Conclusions:

• Environmental and genetic factors significantly influence the discrimination between botanical species and authentic reference materials.
• Frequency distribution plots from soft independent modeling of class analogy effectively illustrate the impact of experimental factors on analysis.